After months of hype, Wally Pfister’s directorial debut, Transcendence, received a 19% “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I remember looking forward to this movie when I first heard about it. However, my hopes quickly extinguished when I saw how poorly it was received by critics and how poorly it did at the box office. It grossed only $23 million domestically (though it went on to gross $103 million worldwide, surpassing its $100 million budget by a hair and making it a slightly profitable movie). That movie was not disappointing at all, but maybe misunderstood. It was slow (one of its significant gripes), but honestly, not any slower than Interstellar (which critics loved, made a ton of movies in the United States, and was released just a few short months earlier). I know I am in the minority when I say that, despite its limitations and shortcomings, which I will discuss, you should give the movie a chance.

Transcendence is not the most straightforward movie to follow. And while that will be frustrating for some (including me) at times, it leaves you satisfied. It was maddening at times trying to figure out what was going on, which characters were good, which were bad, etc. But that was part of the story. In this sense, it was similar to Interstellar as well. And a final comparison to Interstellar would be that the essence of the story (or, more specifically, the reasons the characters did what they did) was built around essential family relationships. The two movies were very similar, and while I liked Interstellar more, I didn’t see a huge drop-off (outside of the cool visuals and sounds, maybe). But the acting and directing were superb, while the story was more than serviceable.

In this movie, Will (Johnny Depp – Finding Neverland, Chocolat) and Evelyn (Rebecca Hall – The Town, Everything Must Go) are artificial intelligence researchers, husband and wife, and very much in love. For me, the heart of the story was the relationship between Will and Evelyn. When a director can successfully make a relationship story the foundation of a science-fiction/fantasy movie and still have it believable, they have done a great job. Christoper Nolan was able to do this with Interstellar. Of course, there have been others, but Interstellar is the movie I’m comparing in this review. They have been working on a project for years, one on its path to completion, that will essentially allow artificially intelligent machines to do practically anything. Will and Evelyn are focusing on the ability to treat diseases or fix any problem on the planet. Some support this (most notably, probably those who do suffer from an illness), but some vocal opponents think that this will allow a machine to “play God.”

When the plan derails due to Will’s sudden illness and the simultaneous explosion at his and Evelyn’s research facility (not too much of a spoiler, since these events happen in the first 20 minutes), they abort it. Or is it? Early in the testing phase of PINN (Physically Independent Neural Network), the consciousness of a test monkey was uploaded to the supercomputer, and Evelyn suggests they try the same with Will. Understandingly desperate, Evelyn will do whatever she can to keep her husband alive. However, Max (Paul Bettany – A Beautiful Mind, Wimbledon), the story’s moral compass, objects to this. And when Will does pass, he is ready to shut the experiment down and believes Evelyn will want to do the same. But just as they prepare to shut down the operation, he appears on the computer screen. It’s his voice. It’s his image. He knows all that’s going on. But he instantly requests more power. It makes Max suspicious (primarily because of how quickly Will starts asking for crucial, highly sensitive information that he had never mentioned when he was alive). Still, Evelyn is overwhelmed with joy and, understandably, blind to anything else. But is the man claiming to be Will actually Will, or is it someone/something else?

Will wants to continue his organization’s original mission and can now do so more easily with his increased abilities. Soon, they are doing precisely what they had set out to do. He’s curing sick people. But there are groups out there who believe that the only way this does not end in disaster is for PINN to shut down entirely. This involves uploading a virus that will destroy everything associated with the supercomputer. But Evelyn knows this will ruin Will, and he will be gone to her forever. So there is resistance from here. In addition, there is resistance from others who are uncertain what to think, including Max, research facility partner Joseph (Morgan Freeman – Million Dollar Baby, The Shawshank Redemption), and FBI agent Buchanan (Cillian Murphy – The Dark Knight, Inception).

Not much more needs to be said about the film. It becomes an ethical dilemma: if a machine that has total control over basically everything, but at the time seems to be doing good, is actually doing so, or is it too much power in a non-human entity? There are differing opinions. Now I am okay with a story that uses a science fiction or fantasy movie to suspend reality. However, I don’t like it when science works for some parts of the story but not others. In this movie, for example, the news goes viral that PINN can cure blindness. It does it for free. However, one shows up instead of getting every blind person to the facility for treatment. Likewise, is one FBI agent investigating this case? Or when things start getting crazy, do you get parts of one instead of groups of military units showing up? And finally, it took two years to build this facility, yet it went unnoticed by anyone but the stakeholders in the small, desolate town where it was being built. Nobody in the project has informed anyone outside the area that something out of the ordinary is happening? Hardly. That part of the movie bothered me, though I was willing to look past it because of the twists and the ending.

The acting was excellent, and the character development was outstanding. I know there has been some talk about Depp losing it and doing either too many Jack Sparrow movies or Tim Burton movies where he plays eccentric characters loaded up with makeup. Most will say this was a miss for him in terms of a role outside what he has been doing lately, but I don’t think so. He did a great job here. He didn’t carry this movie because he didn’t need to. If you can deal with a slower pace and suspend reality, this is undoubtedly one of the more interesting and better science fiction movies of recent years. I am going against what most of the critics think and recommending it. Is it a Top 10 of the Year? No. It’s probably not even Top 20, but it’s still a film I enjoyed.

Plot 8/10
Character Development 10/10 (outstanding development/changes of character)
Character Chemistry 8.5/10
Acting 9/10 (Depp, Hall, Bettany, Freeman, and Murphy were all great)
Screenplay 7.5/10 (yeah, it could have been a bit quicker, and it didn’t need to be quite so confusing at times)
Directing 8/10 (the first-time director I thought was successful…though, in the hands of a slightly more experienced director, this movie had the potential to be more of a pleaser)
Cinematography 8.5/10 (wait until you see Brightwood…also, there will be parts of this movie that remind you of Terminator 2, which, on a side note, was a movie that was just so far ahead of its time)
Sound 7.5/10
Hook and Reel 8.5/10 (I liked Paul Bettany’s quick introduction at the beginning, and while this movie was slow, I never felt that it dragged)
Universal Relevance 8/10
83.5%

B-

Movies You Might Like If You Liked This Movie

• I, Robot
• Inception
• Ex Machina
• The Lawnmower Man
• Deja Vu